wizardthieffighter

Art and a Switch to Monthly Billing

Added 2021-01-25 07:08:08 +0000 UTC

Dear Heroes,

Without further ado: welcome to a simpler stratometaship patreon!

I've made the switch to monthly billing. I put it off pulling the switch and changing the toggle for weeks out of a feeling of inadequacy and uncertaincy [sic]. Well, no time left. Switch is pulled. I honestly am not sure if you will be / are billed for this month or not. It wasn't very clear, but it is what it is.

So, what else have we got this week?

Art

I've shared a number of high-res files. Some of them are older (votbo and the queen of the censers), but the two new pieces I really like are the climbing penglings (they're headlining the section on creating pets and sidekicks in seacat) and the vech (headlining the section on vechs in votbo).

Oh, there are also 6 or 9 new pieces in seacat.

Writings

First, forgive the .pdfs - polishing them to a finality wasn't my focus this week.

Seacat continues to grow. Abilities are up to 79 of 100. Some of the more terrifyingly weird ones (skeletons, vampires) are out, creating space for some new ones. If you have some to suggest, hey, I'll be happy to try them out.
EDIT: UPLOADED Re-NUMBERED VERSION. Should have been v0.64a not v0.62a. Content is the same.
I figured out how to fit the mutation tables and the spells into the seacat book. Though the spells aren't in yet, the "bad mutations" are in. Cleaned up and revised a little to fit better. The spells are going to be in the section on "equipping characters" which will follow just after character creation (right now it's all just one section - so that will change a weee bit). Mutations are in the "changing characters" section - together with xp and advancement.
Rules still not 100% finished.
Main thing is, I will try and post seacat pdf updates weekly.
Voyages of the Black Obelisk - I've cleaned up part of the first update and added it back in. You can see the outline of the new structure, dealing a bit more with gates, and (eventually) replicating a little bit of the UVG structure. Each location starts with some environment, fortune, and encounter tables, then gets weirder.
One thing I hope to add is more "playable" factions, species, or creatures, and more characters to pick up. Everybody keeps relating so much to Vorgo, I think the werepug needs more playable friends.
Oh, and the vech got in from the Ekleksikon.
And Lord Tomorrow's Children hasn't made it to the pdf yet, but it will. https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2021/lord-tomorrows-children/
And news from Red Sky / Dead City. The more I tinkered with the mythos and structure in the Ekleksikon, the more I realized that compared to UVG it lacked a narrative heart to bind a party together. Quite simply, a regular tomb-robbing game in the after-math of a successful conquest, while good, does raise ... troubling questions ... which it fails to answer by sticking to that format. The satire falls flat and grating when it becomes grinding, serious, and unending.
I realized that the solution was in the other side of the situation. Life going on, changed but vital as life tends to be, in the aftermath of the conquest. The conqueror and the conquered being transformed by the experience into something new over time.
Now, initial playtests of Red Sky already had a "real estate" element, but I didn't develop it much, because I had other things to write first. But now, more and more, I've been thinking about how to structure play around place instead of individual characters. Where the UVG has a caravan as a binding vehicle for play and a journey across space, the transformation a conquest wreaks is a journey across time ... so I've been thinking of structuring the play experience of Red Sky around a place. A hotel or hospital or other institution (haven't decided precisely which, yet) the players take over in the aftermath of the war. This creates a shared "character" and a framework for playing different stories with different (or the same) characters, while skipping forward through time months at a time. I hope that sounds a little interesting.